Lux Aeterna
by Mars Carter
Summary: Years of being best friends with Xander and Willow leave Max Mendoza no choice but to dive headfirst into the world of vampires upon the arrival of Buffy Summers. Chronically late and endlessly pessimistic, Max had enough on her plate before fanged offenders started popping up around every bend and turn. Imagine how bad things become when she get a crush on one of them. Spike/OC
**Title:** Lux Aeterna (Eternal Light)
 **Author:** Mars Carter  
 **Rating:** T for romance typical of show, violence/horror/angst typical of show, mature language  
 **Characters:** Max Mendoza, Willow Rosenberg, Xander Harris, Buffy Summers, Cordelia Chase, Angel, Spike, Giles  
 **Pairings:** Max/Spike, Buffy/Angel, Cordelia/Jason (OMC), others TBD  
 **Summary:** Years of being best friends with Xander and Willow leave Max Mendoza no choice but to dive headfirst into the world of vampires upon the arrival of Buffy Summers. Chronically late and endlessly pessimistic, Max had enough on her plate before fanged offenders started popping up around every bend and turn. Imagine how bad things become when she get a _crush_ on one of them. Spike/OC  
 **Opening author's notes:** Hey everyone, and welcome to _Lux Aeterna_! This is the first Buffy fic I've written and I'm really excited for it. In my head, Max is played by Shay Mitchell.

The chapters of this story will follow the general plotline of the show, but I probably won't write out every single episode (at least from season 1). Instead, I'll choose ones I feel add to the plot and mention past events here and there.

You can find me on tumblr at elizabethbemet (main) or at suethor (writing) where I post about this fic!

Please leave a review after reading!

Chapter One: The New Girl

 _Tidsoptimist_. Noun. Origin: Swedish. Definition: a time optimist; someone who always thinks they have more time than they do. Example: Maxine Mendoza.

On this particular morning, Max's inappropriate arrival time was caused by a number of things. Her dog had escaped through a crevice in the gate, her brother insisted on taking a year to get ready in their shared bathroom, and the car had been wonky, leading to her chasing the bus down. The bus had driven away despite her running after it waving a bag of lunch in the air, so she was forced to walk two miles to school while Jason was carted off by his brainless girlfriend.

It was Max's chronic tardiness, however, that led to her unorthodox introduction to Buffy Summers. That is-she rammed directly into her on her way to the office for a tardy pass, and knocked a wooden stake out of her backpack.

"I'm so sorry!" the blonde stranger apologized.

Max shook her head. "That was totally my fault. Don't worry." Kneeling down, she began to help the girl gather up all the papers that had gone flying everywhere. When she noticed the sharp wooden weapon, though, she made a face. _What the hell?_ she thought to herself, gathering up a few more papers.

"Hey!" a familiar voice called. Max peeked over her shoulder at the source-a floppy haired boy with a skateboard under his arm. "Hey, Max." He directed his gaze to the new girl. "I don't know _you_ ," he greeted suavely, smile faltering as a look of awe took over his face. Max looked back at the girl she'd practically mowed over. She scurried to shove her papers back into her bag, but paused to introduce herself.

"I'm Buffy. I'm new."

"Xander...is me. I'm Xander," the boy introduced. Max turned and gave him a bizarre look, and then rolled her eyes. _Smooth, Harris. It's a wonder you're perpetually single._

Buffy smiled, then glanced up. "Shoot, I'm late."

"Well, uh, maybe I'll see you around... maybe at school... since we... both... go there," Xander fumbled hopelessly.

She was already on her feet by the time he forced the words out of his mouth. "Thank you!" she called back to Max and Xander as she stood up and took off down the hall, her blonde hair disappearing as she wove skillfully through the crowd.

"Sorry again!" the brunette hollered back at her.

"Wait, you forgot your-" Xander cut himself off, realizing that she wasn't coming back. "...stake." Xander lowered his arm. "What's with this?" he asked Max, waving it around clumsily.

"Don't-don't do that!" she hissed, yanking it out of his hands. _God_ sometimes-actually, most of the time-Xander could be such a tool. Max squinted at the offending object, poking it with her hand. "Shit. That hurt."

"In the stake's defense, what did you expect?"

Scowling, Max turned to the side, whacking his shoulder with the back of her hand. The third tardy this week was going to land her in after school detention, courtesy of Vice Principal Rooney. Max's mood was not improved by this.

"Hey! _Ow!_ "

"If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me," she told him, rubbing the spot where she'd rather intelligently jabbed her own hand with a wooden stake. "What do I do with this?" Max asked, glaring at the weapon.

"How should I know?" Xander exclaimed.

The bell sounded again, and Max stuffed it into her bag in a panic. She'd hand it to the new girl if she saw her again. Anything was better than just carrying out in the open.

* * *

"She's with _Cordelia_ ," Max announced to Willow as the other girl drank from the water fountain. "I knew she was too cool for us."

Max observed the sight. Buffy was giggling out replies to Cordelia's questions, looking scarily similar to one of those girls that twirled a lock of hair around their finger whenever guys told unfunny sex jokes. It was practically the same things, except Cordelia herself was unfunny, and she never told sex jokes.

"You passed!" the taller, more intimidating girl decided across the hallway.

Buffy laughed. "Good," she answered good naturedly.

And then Cordelia, as if she were a shark, locked her eyes on Max and Willow standing by the water fountain. They were prey. Max straightened up from against the wall, folding her arms across her chest.

"Hey, Willow!" the brunette greeted with a smile. When she spread her lips, she revealed the seeming rows of sharp teeth hidden in her jaws. "Nice dress. Good to know you've seen the softer side of Sears."

Willow, now upright, opened her mouth, letting out an unsure, "Uh…my mom picked it out."

"No wonder you're such a guy magnet," Cordelia retorted, swinging her ponytail and widening her grin.

"Piss off, Cordelia," Max interrupted. "Don't you have some puppies to kick?"

With a roll of her eyes, Cordelia answered, "Are you done?" Her harsh tone was matched by an irritated countenance.

 _Bitch,_ Max thought to herself. She flipped Cordelia off, and then started to tug at Willow's sleeve. "C'mon, Willow. If I have to keep looking at her face I might vomit. It's probably all the silicone making me sick."

Before Cordelia could open her mouth again, Max started dragging Willow down the hall. "Ugh," she said in disgust. Then, she remembered something. "Crap! I still have the new girl's stake."

"Her _what?"_ Willow inquired almost immediately. "Her stake?"

"Yeah. She dropped it in the hallway." Max frowned. How bizarre, that one would bring a pointy wooden stick to school. And even if someone did, the tiny blonde new girl didn't seem like she would be the person to carry it around. "Wanna see?" Max offered, and was answered by a wary nod.

She opened up her back enough for Willow to peek in.

"Whoa," the other girl said, eyes going wide with a combination of fear and surprise. "Freaky."

"I know, right? It's bizarro."

Hesitantly, she reached into the bag and ran her fingers over the non-pointy part. It was perfectly smooth.

 _I mean,_ she wondered to herself, _how does someone even obtain a stake? Do you make it? Do you buy it?_ All, she supposed, good questions. Were there people out there who made stakes for a living? _Why!?_ Max sighed at her inconclusive thoughts, glancing at the clock at the end of the hallway. "I have gym next. See you at lunch?"

Willow nodded, and then scurried off towards her next period.

Max had known Willow since grade school. Xander came along later, when the two had already secured a friendship. And sure, Max thought Xander was a fine dude, but she'd never understand Willow's crush on him. _I mean, has she seen his hair?_ And the way he acted around girls had always been somewhat _ugh_ in her eyes.

Still, she did her best to be there for the girl. Her ever-kind personality balanced out Max's contrasting pessimism and bitchiness. Where Willow cared for others (and their opinion of her), Max had a weird us-against-the-world mentality, with "us" including Xander, Willow, her twin brother, and her mom while "the world" consisted of...well, everyone else. This mentality was probably responsible for her seemingly-chronic pessimism.

Heading towards the gym, Max adjusted the strap on her bag. Once she was in the locker room, she settled on the bench between rows of mint-colored lockers. A pair of girls entered the gym just as she'd started turning the lock to match the digits of her combo. "Hey, Aphrodesia," she greeted one of them, who'd been her biology lab partner last year.

"Oh, hey!" the girl answered, before turning back to her friend and gossiping some more. "Well, the chatter in the caf is that she got _kicked out,_ " she announced shamelessly. "And that's why her mom had to get a new job."

"Neg," the other girl exclaimed with a gasp.

"Pos!" Aphrodesia reaffirmed. "She was starting _fights_."

"Neg- _ly_ ," her friend argued as Max pulled her tee shirt and sweats out of her duffle.

"Well, I heard from Blue, and she said-"

She stopped talking, suddenly, letting out an ear-piercing shriek. Max felt the weight of someone landing on her back and she scurried up to see what it was.

More like _who_ it was.

The body was pale, eyes wide and unseeing, but staring at them still unnerved her. The screaming in the background became dulled for a second and all Max heard was the drumming of her own pulse. Like she was swimming, or something. She wanted to look away, but she couldn't. Instead, she just gawked at it, mouth slightly ajar.

Aphrodesia's friend continued wailing like a banshee until a gym teacher came over. The emergency led to a free period instead of class, an event that excited Max. Not only had she gotten out of a mile run, but now she could look into the body.

Being the daughter of a PI had instilled high levels of curiosity in Max. Her mother had been a police officer until she got injured in the field, but there were plenty of bizarre things happening in Sunnydale to support the three of them. While Max's brother, Jason, never snooped through their mom's files, Max had flipped through the pages of more than one folder, immersing herself in something that was truly none of her business.

She headed to the computer lab, which she knew for a fact had no class this period. Max took up residence on the monitor in the corner, tapping away at the student password (quite creatively, 'password') and then opening up a browser.

Typing in "Sunnydale murders" only brought up about a million results. A frightening amount of Sunnydale students and residents had fallen prey to serial killers, it seemed. Weird.

Max scanned the results, finding nothing of interest. The computer mouse made a clicking noise as she rolled it along. After a good half hour had passed and no progress was made, Max closed out the results and cleared her browser history.

The gym was swarmed with police. Since class was still in session, there were only a few students mulling about. With the exception of a few stragglers, not many of Max's peers were actually interested in seeing a dead body.

Locating a young-looking deputy, Max narrowed her eyes. Easy target. "What's happening?" she asked him. "Do they know who the body was?"

"You know it's a body?" he answered, deflecting her questions with his own.

"Yeah, I was there when it fell out of the locker."

The deputy shot a glance over at one of the older looking officers. "Sir!" he called. "This girl was there when the body fell out."

The older officer had a bit of scruff around his mouth and graying hair. With his thumbs hooked in his belt loops, he strolled over. Something about his gait reminded Max of a cowboy from one of the western films that played on TV every now and then.

Getting interrogated hadn't been part of the plan, but if she was closer, they might tell her something.

"You were there when the body was discovered?" the younger deputy asked.

"That is what I said. Like, thirty seconds ago," Max replied dryly. She rolled her eyes. "It was, like, super pale. Why? What happened to it?"

"We can't tell you anything about an open case, miss," the older one answered.

"But what if I, like, knew him?" Max asked, voice going high in an attempt to mimic Cordelia Chase. "What if he was the secret admirer sending me notes?"

"We're not telling you anything, kid," the older officer replied insistently.

"Was he killed?"

"Seems like it," the younger deputy mused, and then his eyes went wide.

"Harrelson!" the older one barked, and they walked away as the young man was scolded by his superior.

Well, it might not have been the most fruitful conversation, but at least Max got some answers-what. She still didn't know who the killer or the victim were, when he was killed, why, or where. But she'd take what she could get. She didn't expect it to be that easy anyways.

The shrill tone of the bell rang out in all the classrooms, and Max happily turned on her heel and started scanning the hallways for a familiar head of red hair. It took a few minutes of hard staring, but she eventually tracked Willow down. "Guess what," she whispered scandalously in greeting.

With a start, Willow made a squeaking noise and whirled around. "What?" she asked, sounding more surprised than interested.

"They found a _body_ in gym."

Eyes going wide, Willow leaned a bit closer. "Like...a dead body?"

Max nodded, eyes glinting. "Isn't it exciting? Horrible, but still."

"Uh, sure. I guess," Willow answered with halfhearted enthusiasm.

Max made a face. "What's up?" she asked, sensing that there was something wrong. Her friend wasn't the most enthused person all the time, but Willow usually enjoyed sleuthing. Or at least, she enjoyed it when Max engaged her assistance with meddling in her mom's cases. This wasn't an affair like the jobs her mom worked, but Max'd figured Willow would be into it anyways.

"It's... _nothing."_

" _Willow_."

"Don't worry about it!"

"Willow, c'mon." Max bit her lip with worry. "You can tell me anything."

"It's nothing...just...the new girl," Willow conceded finally. She mumbled the last bit so low that Max could barely hear her. "She just...there's something weird about her. I don't know, it's stupid."

"No! It isn't," Max insisted. "After all, she did bring a stake her on her first day." Max wrinkled her nose. "Well, it's weird to bring a stake _any_ day, but the first day especially. Not how you make a good first impression." She considered for a moment. "It's just weird."

Willow smiled a little at her friend's back-and-forth monologue. "Yeah….That _is_ pretty weird."

"See!?" A thought occurred to Max and she suddenly grinned. "We should do some digging after school today. My place?" Willow tried to fight the grin for a few moments before giving in. "Good," Max decided. "Let's get to sleuthing."

* * *

 **a/n:** Please let me know what you think!


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